Website review: Ran Prieur
People who like this website
- gypsydaze1
Ojai
- I-Exist-Here
California
- bdjewkes
Palo Alto
- somebullshit
Brentwood
- wirebutterfly
Burlingame
- kamesan
Bay Area
- passionflower
San Francisco
- BoontDustie
Seattle
- venbear
Arvada
- SavePoint
Sooke
StumbleUpon is the best way to discover great web sites, videos, photos, blogs and more - based on your interests.
Everything is submitted and rated by the community. Discover, share and review the best of the web!
Reviews of this website
Infojnkee rated 12 months ago- . From the page: I've been living on $600 a month or less, sometimes much less, as long as I've been financially independent. When I started this document in February 2000, I was living in a tiny room in a run-down house. I spent eight months on a waiting list and now I'm sharing a small low-income one-bedroom apartment with no sunlight, but a perfect location so I can bike everywhere. I buy organic groceries and mostly make my own food from scratch. And I bathe with a washcloth in the sink and brush my teeth and shave with nothing but water. It's not about denying myself, or being "pure," or getting far-lefty social status. I don't want to be pure: I eat chicken (organic) and play a video game (Zelda) and get my news from the internet (rense.com). I get plenty of sleep and make two or three pies a week and lots of sourdough waffles with real maple syrup. I'd rather live with my great roommate than live alone, and I find a bike to be much easier and more fun than a car, even in the rain. It's not about being a martyr, or a monk, or a star. It's about being a warrior, persistently taking positive action to change the world in your own particular way. My way includes my personal economy, and my writing, and also my attempt to save enough money to pay cash for primitive land, and physically create a foothold of another world in this one. I'm not writing about myself in here to get admiration, but to give inspiration, to persuade people to be ambitious, to try. This is what I mean: If you want to get rich by any available means, and buy a giant house and a yacht, and you focus on those goals, you can do it -- but you are not being ambitious. If you aim for wealth on a path of complete honesty, and you spend your wealth on political reforms that work against your accumulation of wealth, then you are being ambitious. In the one case, you're choosing a state of being because you've been told to choose it, and you'll take whatever path is easiest. In the other case, you're choosing a path because of a wider understanding of the meaning of that path, and you'll take wherever it leads. I'm trying to redefine ambition, not only so it's free of capitalism, but so it's free of success. I am "a failure" by every dominant standard: I'm poor, I'm not getting laid, and even my writing is making no visible impact. But I can live every day as if I'm on the front lines of a revolution, and every moment as if I'm here to have a good time, and no one can take that away from me. .
- serendpd rated 12 months ago
- Civilization? A failed experiment = 36 seconds in an hour. Some interesting insites into human culture.
- zenbox rated 15 months ago
- Ran takes every thread of ideas i have and develops them one more step. It is one of the few sites that i am a dedicated daily reader of. The site contains some classic article, excellent links, and thoughtful commentary.
- laodan rated 21 months ago
- The difference between tribal and civilized via Jason Godesky / The Antropik Network, in Ran Prieur Online
November 13. Here's an edited-down version of an email I got from Thomas, who has learned about tribal culture from his grandparents who actually lived in a tribe: The difference between tribal and civilized is human ownership. In true tribal life, human beings are owned by their tribe and by extension a land base. It is the earth itself that actually accounts for everyone and mediates, leaving behind those who can live with its rules. No one can interact with any individual without going through their owner. No individual stands alone -- we are all ambassadors. Tribal life is a very serious life of negotiation and watching your step and conduct. People only meet on social basis, NEVER utility basis as we do in civilized life. There is no on-going project that all must partake in other than each one fulfilling their individual ambitions to become people of the land. Freedom from true social protocol is what civilization has always strived to protect. With it, every single individual can be objectified fully and forced into any type of despicable labor. It is the blueprint for how to remain unequal entities whose worth is judged solely on utility to the the state. I am usually stumped because I want to tell people what is wrong with civilization without them trying to form a group with me, without them turning to me as some authority. It is so hard for people who do not know social barriers and are so used to being belittled and dependent to finally become their own heroes. The "social vs utility" bit just about knocked me off my chair. In a tribe, purely utilitarian relationships are forbidden! The economic is a subset of the social, and in a land-based tribe, the fundamental social relationship is between the people and the land. But in civilization, the social and the economic are carefully separated. It's uncool to accept money from your family -- you're supposed to "earn" it through a utilitarian deal with strangers. We don't want to chat with the person behind the counter -- we just want our coffee. The difference between tribal and civilized Alpha Dogs, Wolf Packs & the Wandering Free Families One of the best and succinctest definitions hat I have ever seen about animism versus civilization: "In a tribe, purely utilitarian relationships are forbidden! The economic is a subset of the social, and in a land-based tribe, the fundamental social relationship is between the people and the land." But I don't agree with Ran on civilization: "in civilization, the social and the economic are carefully separated." It seems to me that with civilization there is more like an inversion from "The economic being a subset of the social" to the social being a subset of the economic"
- The difference between tribal and civilized via Jason Godesky / The Antropik Network, in Ran Prieur Online
- FrikkinLazer rated 24 months ago
- Not a lot of pictures or anything, but try to read some of this. You might learn something...
- Lokutus rated 27 months ago
- Ran is the man when it comes to collapse.
- Holigopoly rated 31 months ago
- "I reject the entire concept of "privilege." It's a lie. No one is or has ever been "privileged." If ten people are living happily on an island, and I go and lock nine of them in a cage, have I made the tenth person privileged? If ten people are playing in the woods and eating fruit, and I give one of them an intravenous feeding tube and a hand-held computer game, and then I get him to cut down the fruit trees, have I done him a favor? The concept of "privilege" does not make sense except in the context of an exploitative system, and in an exploitative system everyone is exploited." -Ran Prieur, Civilization Will Eat Itself sorry to shout, but YOU MUST VISIT THIS SITE. the Civilization Will Eat Itself zine landed in this hand from another hand, it's one of those beautiful viruses that needs to be spread. If this link is at the top of this page for a long time it's only because it'll keep getting moved back in the hope that another person out there will read it and play the ripple spreading outwards game. Kind of better in the author's photocopied handwriting DIY style, but everything else, and more judging from how many other works are here, is still in there....sigh
- Tigana rated 33 months ago
- An insider's account of post-Katrina New Orleans:: "I have been talking to a friend who just arrived back from New Orleans where she spent three weeks in the 9th Ward district and Algiers. She went over with her van to work in transporting for medical clinics. A lot of what she did, with a group called Common Ground, was walk around and knock on doors and get the neighbors to associate with each other and help each other to build a community. This is what she told me. The poor black sections, especially the 9th Ward, are fucked. The outer white parts of the city have power, people are shopping, services are working, bars are open, etc. The 9th Ward has decaying dogs, no power and none expected for months, and fully traumatized people who haven't seen other humans much at all. No flies on the the dead dogs either -- the whole place is too toxic. There is an 8pm curfew, and national guardsmen patrol the streets with assault rifles. The police are violent, and frequently way out of line. The beating that was on TV is normal shit. When someone gets pulled over there are two officers and two federal agents and all four come up to the vehicle. They are arresting people for very minor reasons. My friend was watching an old black man trying to wave down a patrol car because his house was being looted. Her friend, a white guy, waved down the cop and he stopped but he said he was off duty and drove off. The plans for years have been to widen the canal for oil shipping, which means flooding the 9th Ward. Now it's flooded. The main reason the levee was breached was that a barge crashed through it. There is a photo of the barge before the storm secured with one tie-down, which is not standard safety. Neighbors were showing her letters from ten years ago from the oil companies trying to buy their land to do this. Right after Katrina there were people being very violent with firearms. There were 1400 search and rescue boats but only 200 allowed in because the officials were arguing over who had jurisdiction. So they entered the city through unofficial ways and flooded streets. They were instructed to save women and children first, but adult men would push in front and sometimes threaten with guns. Eventually the search and rescue boaters carried rifles too, and they or soldiers were shooting the men trying the force their way to being rescued. One guy, a former black panther, stayed at his house, and there was a white militia patrolling threatening to shoot anyone who they found looting, and threatened this guy off his property. By then he had supplies and weapons and friends to threaten back. Often people would break down crying at just being smiled at, and sob while telling their stories. My friend is an emotional wreck now, but is going back soon to live there. There are activist groups helping in whatever the people need. They are trying to help a community grow from it, and they have a legal team that already won a case from a landlord trying to evict all his tenants from a water damaged building. The electrical companies won't fix the poles until the citizens fix their interior house electrical first, and have it inspected, with an average cost of $5000. The long term vision is to have the people able to stay there even in their yards if necessary, and bring in permaculture specialists to help build something out of it. The main concern is that the 9th Ward is moving toward evicting the people. They are told it is all unlivable, and it isn't true."
